Posts from ‘No Tankers’ - Page 40

Tomorrow, Saturday Sept 20th 2008 is a big day. It’s a big day for me, everybody at Dogwood Initiative, our allies, our supporters, and for those who have fought this fight before. It was over 35 years ago that the first major struggle over whether or not to allow oil tankers through BC’s north coast […]

One of Plato’s major rants in writing The Republic is targeted at the Sophists, who represented a school of thought that emphasized rhetoric as the primary and most essential skill for aspiring politicians and leaders. Plato accused rhetoric of too easily being turned to abuse and manipulation of the masses by fancy use of language […]

Sometimes it’s difficult to break through messaging, poor media coverage, and casual opinions (i.e. collectively known as bullsh*t) on an issue to the extent that you can productively talk about fundamentals. This was the case at a Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) investment symposium I attended this past June. The CAPP symposium, held in […]

Last week, a Globe and Mail story by Norvall Scott broke news of a “business-led lobbying effort to create a partial moratorium on oil sands development in order to free up conservation land” in northern Alberta’s heavily scarred Athabasca region. The move reflects a desperation on the part of some of Alberta’s largest tar sands […]

(Text of speech given at Dogwood’s Sing for an Oil Free Coast celebration attended by 200 people on May 11, 2007 at the B.C. legislature) It’s amazing to be here today on a beautiful sunny day in Victoria celebrating among so many like minded people who care about the planet. We are here to celebrate […]

Becoming Prime Minister of Canada gives one a lot of power, but I didn’t know it could turn a somewhat bookish policy wonk like StephenHarper into one of the world’s greatest magicians. But if he succeeds in disappearing a 34-year old moratorium banning oil tankers in BC’s fragile northern inside coastal waters his conjuring will […]

Buried in the back pages last week was a story about an oil spill from Terasen’s pipeline that contaminated creeks and land near Abbotsford. Local residents are worried about the spill contaminating their wells and harming local livestock and the failure for government or Terasen staff to notice the spill until four days after local […]

On June 10, 1999, a gas pipeline in Bellingham’s Whatcom Falls Park exploded, killing three young people. The legacy of that event is shared grief and sense of loss in the community that the city feels to this day, five years later. (See Ceremony honors pipeline blast victims and Whatcom Falls pipeline disaster) The explosion […]